The Christians and Antichrists, Pt 2
1 John 2:19-26
For those of you who are visiting with us, what we do around here when we gather together is what you've already experienced, in addition to that we turn to the Bible. This incredibly enriched book written by God using certain human authors who wrote down what God wanted them to write, we go into the Bible to understand it. It is God's revelation, it is God's message to us. It is the only book that God ever wrote. Everything He wanted us to know is contained within the 66 books of the Bible. Every Word of God is pure. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. All of it is profitable for our instruction and our training. All of it works together to produce in us an understanding of divine truth, an understanding that changes our lives for time and eternity.
So we have determined that if this is fact is the Word of God, if every word comes from Him, every line, every verse, every paragraph, every chapter, every book, then we must go to each of these portions and we must understand what it is that He has said. So month after month and year after year and decade after decade we work our way through the text of Scripture. And we are transformed in the process, as you well know.
We find ourselves in a book in the New Testament called 1 John. John wrote three letters, the Apostle John, three letters. The first one is the longest and then there are two very brief letters which are identified as Second John and Third John. Of course, we also know that John wrote a gospel which is the record of the Lord Jesus Christ. And also, John was used by God to write down the book of the Revelation, the apocalypse which describes the end of the world and the eternal state.
But we're looking at one of his three letters. This first one, just five chapters, a book that many consider to be basic to an understanding of the Christian faith. And it is and yet though it is basic, the longer you study it the more you dig into it the deeper and richer you find that it is. You might assume that a book that is very basic wouldn't have much appeal to someone who was very mature and very knowledgeable in the Bible and theology. Quite the contrary is true. The mysteries of this marvelous letter are inexhaustible, as we're finding out.
Now we find ourselves in the second chapter working our way through in a section that really takes up the latter part of the second chapter from verse 18 down to verse 27. And we've titled this discussion, "Christians and Antichrists." And the reason for that is because of verse 18, "Children, it is the last hour, and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen from this we know that it is the last hour."
Almost everybody in the western world can demonstrate some familiarity with the word Antichrist. It's a somewhat ominous word, it's a word that carries with it certain apocalyptic visions. It has sort of connected with it a certain darkness, a certain bleakness, a certain fiercesomeness, it's a word that sort of belongs with evil and demons and destruction and death. It's a foreboding word, this word antichrist and rightly it should be because the antichrist is indeed a foreboding individual, the Bible says, will come at the end of the age.
The word antichrist is a word that evokes then a sort of singular response from everybody who is familiar with it. If you know anything about the Bible, when the word antichrist comes up, you think immediately about a vicious beast who arises at the end of human history and is empowered by Satan and dominates the world and forces everybody to worship him and massacres people all over the globe, particularly Jewish people and people who confess Jesus Christ. A horribly powerful sovereign, almost omniscient person who knows everything about everybody because everybody is sort of in the system, marked in some way as to be identified by him and his forces. A horrible creature, a powerful, threatening creature that finally comes to his end, the Bible says, under the destruction of Jesus Christ who returns, engages in a very brief battle with Antichrist, and all of his forces because Antichrist is a human being, albeit energized by Satan and demons, still a human being he is defeated along with his forces by Jesus Christ at the end of human history. And Christ then sets up His own Kingdom on the earth and rules in that Kingdom for a thousand years, at which time the universe as we know it is dissolved and in its place a new heaven and a new earth is created where we who know Christ will live with Him forever and ever in perfection, righteousness, joy and peace.
But just the word antichrist, and we think of this solitary monster, this massively powerful anti-God, indeed anti-Christ individual who is the last and greatest enemy that the gospel will ever know. But you've got to extend your thinking beyond that because in verse 18 it says it is true, you have heard it right that Antichrist is coming, that final one, even now, however, many antichrists have arisen, says John. You don't have to wait to run into antichrist, the only antichrist is not the one that's coming at the end of human history. In fact, there are many antichrists right now. They are, in fact, everywhere. Some of them are here tonight in this place. They're in your homes, in some cases, in your schools, they're at your work place. They ride with you on the airplane. They ride with you on the bus. They talk to you in the neighborhood. They're involved in every aspect of human life, education, government, medicine, entertainment, religion. They're everywhere, these antichrists.
How are we to identify them? Go down to verse 22. How do we know when we've run into an antichrist? Verse 22, "Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ, this is the antichrist." Anybody is antichrist who denies that Jesus is the Messiah. Bound up in that word Christ, of course, the Hebrew equivalent, Messiah, is that He is the anointed of God, the anointed prophet, the anointed priest who intercedes for men before God, the anointed King, the sovereign Lord. Any denial of Jesus as Lord and Redeemer, Lord and Savior constitutes an antichrist attitude. You cannot come to Jesus with patronizing sort of diminished compliments. You cannot speak of Jesus as a good man, a noble man, a religious man, a wonderful healer, a man who had God in his heart, as one writer called him, you cannot with all of the best that you can think of to describe Him, describe Him as man without taking your place among the antichrists. He is not just a man, even a good man, even the best of men. He is not just a religious man, even the best of religious men. He is in fact the Messiah, the Christ of God. And if you deny that, the rest of the verse says you are denying the Father and the Son. You have just denied God and His Son because Jesus the Messiah is the Son of God, that is to say possesses the same nature of God, He is to God as you are to your father. You bear the same essence. You are the son of your father. You're genetically put together from your father. You bear the same essential life essence, you are human because he is human. And Jesus is the Son of God, since God is God, Jesus then is God as well. Since God is deity, divine, so is Jesus. You say anything less than that Jesus is Messiah, Savior, promised, anointed, prophet, priest and King, Redeemer, if you say anything less than that, you've denied the Son and you have therefore denied the Father. The Son and the Father are one.
"Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God." If you do not confess Jesus with your mouth as Lord, Romans 10 as we heard earlier tonight, Romans 10:9, if you do not confess...what is confess? Homologeo, to say the same thing, if you do not agree with Jesus concerning who He is as has been revealed by Him and in Scripture, if you do not make the right assessment of Jesus, you are not from God and this is literally it says, this is antichrist, the antichrist attitude. "You have heard that it is coming, but it now is already in the world."
And one other verse in 2 John verse 7, "Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist." If you deny that He is Messiah, that's an antichrist spirit. If you deny that He is the Son of the Father God, therefore bearing the essence of deity, that constitutes an antichrist attitude. If you deny that he is God in human flesh, that is antichrist attitude.
Summing it up, to say anything less about Jesus than what is true, to deny anything about Him that is revealed concerning Him in Scripture is to take your place among the antichrists. Any misrepresentation of Christ constitutes an antichrist attitude. Anybody who rejects Jesus Christ as Messiah, Lord and Savior, anybody who rejects Jesus Christ as God, anyone who rejects Jesus Christ as man cause He was fully the God/Man is antichrist. You cannot reinvent Jesus. You cannot patronize Him with some definition that you think is perhaps good enough, if you say less than what God has said about Him, you are guilty of being antichrist.
To make it very simple, Jesus said this in Matthew 12:30, "He who is not with Me, is against Me." And there isn't any middle ground. You're either with Him, or you're against Him, that's it. You're either a Christian, or an antichrist. Kind of hard to think about the fact that antichrist wait on you in the restaurant, check you out of the market, but they do. Anybody who does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, who does not embrace Him as Messiah, King, as God, as Man is guilty of the spirit of antichrist. You are either for Him, or you're anti-Christ.
And so the emphasis on Christians and antichrists in this section is central to John's purpose. Go back to chapter 2 where our text is for a minute. John is trying to clarify who the true Christians are. And he's trying to finger the phonies. He's trying to put his finger on the deceivers, especially those deceivers who infiltrate the church and try to replace the truth of God with lies. Do I have to go back over this again? Maybe just very briefly.
There is in the universe a great conflict between the truth and lies. God is true. God cannot lie, the Bible says. God speaks only what is true. That's because God is absolutely perfect. God always tells the truth, always speaks the truth, He is the truth. That's why Jesus could say, "As God incarnate I am the way, the truth and the life." And so what Satan wants to do is sow a lie everywhere he can in the world so that people don't believe God. Satan does not want people worshiping God. Satan hates God who judged him and sentenced him to a Lake of Fire and even created a Lake of Fire for Satan and all the demons and as well all the antichrists, human beings, who reject Him. But Satan does everything he can to sow lies in the minds of men and women, that's what happened back in Genesis chapter 3, as we've noted for you, comes to Eve in the garden and he says did God really say....making her question God. Then he goes even beyond that and said God told you a lie, God said you would die when you ate of that fruit, I'm telling you you won't, God is a liar, I'm telling you the truth, so this is the conflict. God speaks the truth in His Word, and Satan comes in to sow lies. And so what Satan wants to do is to sow those lies among the people who believe the truth. He wants, as it were, rip out of the hands of God all the potential prospects. He wants to tear out of God's possession all those who are drawing near to Him through hearing the truth. And so he works very hard to sow lies in the church.
We see that all the way through the New Testament. No sooner is the church planted, founded, launched in the second chapter of Acts, then heresy just hammers the church. And all the writers of the New Testament epistles that are working with the church and writing to the church deal with the heresies that are assaulting the church cause this is the great satanic strategy. Not all antichrists infiltrate the church. Anybody who rejects Christ is antichrist. Not all antichrists infiltrate the church, but many do. And John wants his readers, including us, to be able to distinguish between the true Christians and the antichrists who infiltrate the church to replace the truth of God with satanic lies. John dealt with this, as you know, and Peter dealt with this and James dealt with this. Jude dealt with this and Paul dealt with it all the time. The lies sown among the believers, among those who were committed to the truth, to lead them astray and to capture those who were just coming to understand the truth.
So John knows that in this congregation there are Christians and antichrists. There are true believers and there are the deceivers, the liars, the antichrists who have come in to infiltrate. He wants the readers to understand the difference...the difference. As you know, going through this book there are basically two categories of tests that he offers. He offers doctrinal tests to determine whether someone is a true Christian. Doctrinal tests are twofold, the first is their view of man that man is a sinner. Secondly, their view of Christ. Someone who is a true Christian has a right view of himself, that is a right view of his depravity and his sinfulness, and a right view of Jesus Christ as Messiah, as God and as Man.
And then there are also moral tests that John gives by which you can determine a Christian. Not only by what they believe, but by how they live. And the two moral categories have to do with obedience and love. True believers who have been transformed obey God, they obey the Word of God gladly, eagerly. Also, they love God, they love others and they do not love the world. So true Christians, John is pointing out all through this epistle, are known by their doctrine, they have the right view of sin and the right view of Christ, they're known by their behavior, they are obedient to the Word of God, and they demonstrate spiritual love and they don't love the world.
But here in verse 18 is a very severe contrast. You could look at a church and say, "Well, there are the people in the church who believe the truth, and there are those who don't. There are the people in the church who obey and love and the people who don't obey and don't love. And you would understand what we're talking about, what John is writing about, but how much more stark is it to say there are in the church Christians and antichrists? Those are such polar opposites." And for John in this text the issue is their view of Christ...their view of Christ. If you have the right view of Christ that leads you to salvation, if you have the wrong view of Christ, you are an antichrist. Now if you're in the church and these people appear, these who are against Christ who assault the character of Christ as God and Man and who assault the role of Christ as the anointed Messiah, prophet, peace and King. If you were in a church and you see people doing that, could shake your confidence...could shake your faith, could make you wonder whether you're safe, whether you're okay, whether you might defect, whether you really have the truth or not. And so John says the very fact, in verse 18, just still reviewing, the very fact that there are these antichrists that infiltrate the church and so lies is proof that it is the last hour. He starts verse 18, "It is the last hour," he ends verse 18, "It is the last hour." Only again he says, "We know that it is the last hour because of the many antichrists that have arisen. It is the very attack on the truth that proves Christ to be true.
Why would Satan be making such concerted effort against the deity of Christ? Why is it that worldwide, incessantly, relentlessly every cult, every heresy always assaults the nature of Christ? Liberal theology assaults the nature of Christ. Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, you name it, they go after the person of Christ. This is typical of the satanic assault and it is evidence plenty that Christ is the true Christ to have stirred up this much animosity.
What does it mean it is the last hour? Well I told you last time, the last hour means the messianic age, the age inaugurated when Messiah came, the last hour of man's day. We know it's the last hour the time of Messiah because the Messiah must have come or else why would all the forces of antichrist be so relentless and adamant in attacking Him? And so we have the distinction then in verse 18 between antichrist and Christians.
Now what I want to do in the verses that flow down here, and John...the way John writes is not always linear and sequential, he kind of circles around things. So we'll take this in two sections and jump around a little bit. First of all, let's look at the characteristics of the antichrists, and then we'll look at the characteristics of the Christians.
The characteristics of the antichrists, three characteristics that identify them. These antichrists are false Christians, as I said, not all antichrists come into the church, infiltrate and try to sow lies and deceptions, attacking the nature of Christ, and the work of Christ. But the ones that do are manifest, they are manifest. And in this case the first thing that John says about them is, the first characteristic, they depart from the fellowship...they depart from the fellowship. Wherever there is a true church and a pure church, a true fellowship, wherever there are those who genuinely know Christ, these liars and deceivers and antichrists don't survive. They come into the church, they endeavor to destroy the church by sowing the discord of lies ad deception. But eventually they leave. Verse 19, "They went out from us," they-going back to these antichrists, they went out from us.
Now let me stop there for just a minute. The people in the church were maybe wondering why these people had come, why they had proclaimed that they were true teachers, they knew the truth, that the true believers in the church were under some illusions that Jesus wasn't who they believed He was. That the theology that they had been taught was not accurate, that it wasn't a representation of the truth of God. They were saying all of this, they were a part of the church. Then all of a sudden they left. Some of the believers might be saying, "Were they really telling us the truth? Are we wrong? And they left and we've lost our opportunity and now we're sort of caught in this deception?" There were those kinds of questions apparently swirling around. They went out from us, did they take the real truth with them? Well maybe there were some in the church that were influenced by these false teachers that had at least superficially, like we heard tonight again in the times of baptism, superficially they possessed Christ, they said they believed, they went through the motions outwardly. The false teachers came in, they followed along the false teachers, they bought into their lies and when the false teachers moved on, these people left the church. How are we to understand that? Did they follow the truth? Did those guys have the truth? What were those people? And if they were really real, why did they leave? Why did they follow the false teachers if they were really a part of us, if we really had the truth?
And in verse 19 John answers all of those kinds of queries by saying, "They went out from us but they were not really of us. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. But they went out in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us."
Amazing thing, God actually allowed false teachers still to come into a church, to pull out the people who aren't genuine. Did you get that? God uses liars and deceivers and false prophets to purge the church. There were some people who left the church to which John is writing. Could be any other church situation at that time or since, but initially these were people who left the church. They abandoned it. They went out from us...these antichrists left us Christians. Why? And they, no doubt, took some people with them. Why? Well they never really were of us, they're not real Christians, if they had been of us they would have remained with us, they went out in order that it might be shown that they all were not of us. Their defection gives clear evidence of their character.
There was an actual purpose in their departure, at the end of the verse. I mentioned it. See that "in order that," that's a purpose clause. They went out, they left...obviously the Spirit of God was at work in their leaving, "in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us." So God allows false teachers to come in the church, influence certain people in the church, drag them out of the church and the church says...what happened? What happened? Did they...are we missing something? Are we wrong? Are we not? How could this happen? These people were here, they seemed to be professing the truth, and they left.
And the response of the writer John is, "This is one way in which God makes it clear who is real...who's real. Their departure was their unmasking. And it was good that the false teachers came...listen...and that the false teachers led astray those who never really were of us, so that they wouldn't remain like leaven, like a rotten apple in a barrel to influence the rest of us."
Doesn't God work in amazing ways? You might say to yourself, you actually believe that God would allow antichrists to infiltrate the church? Yes, just like He allowed a messenger of Satan to tear up the Corinthian church to accomplish the humility of the Apostle Paul, as 2 Corinthians 12 says, God would allow error to come into a church to be sown among believing people. Today it happens all the time through books that are written, through magazine articles, through internet sites, through television, through radio in order that like magnets the antichrists might attract to themselves the people who aren't real believers and purge the church. Amazing. We have that going on here. I'm amazed. I hear about people who have decided to follow some false teacher or some false teaching, leave the church, abandon a true and biblical view of Christ, the doctrine of salvation.
I'll give you an illustration. A lady in our church when we were over in the chapel, actually the Family Center, came to me after the service and said that she wanted to come to the knowledge of Christ. And I went off in the little side room and spent an hour with her and talked to her about Christ. And she professed to believe and embraced Jesus Christ. She stayed in our church for many, many, many, many years. She taught in our church. She served in our church. She became something of a personal missionary, endeavoring to reach out to people. She was in our church until she began to be drawn by false teachers, probably two decades in our church. Her influence was growing. It was growing not only in our church but in other churches as she was communicating her faith in Christ to women's groups here and there. And false teachers came, got a hold of her, and she left, totally denied everything she said she had believed. And people have said to me, concerning this woman, "How could she do this?" And the answer is here. God protected not only us, but God protected His church in other places by sending along a strong enough magnet of false teaching to unmask her, lest she be responsible for leading others astray. I've communicated that to her on a number of occasions.
She went out from us because she wasn't of us. If she had been of us, she would have continued or remained with us. That's what it says. But she went out so that it could be known that she was not of us. There are going to be plenty of false teachers out there and they're going to attract the false believers. Now she is an apologist for a false religious system. Everywhere she can go, she makes a defense for that false system against the truth.
There's no question in my mind whether or not she's a Christian, she's not. She went out from us because she was not of us. And I'll give you a little hint of what's to come. True Christians don't do that. True Christians don't do that. The end of verse 27, he says, "His anointing teaches you, you true Christians, about all things is true and is not a lie and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him." You know what "abide in Him" means? You will remain. You can send a dozen false teachers into this church, you can put them on the television, the radio, the internet, whatever other means to communicate, they will not...they will not draw true believers away because true believers remain, they abide, they stay. And that's why in verse 19 he says, "If they had been of us, they would have remained with us."
You're not going to abandon the truth for a lie if you're a true believer because the faith to believe the truth that God has granted to you is permanent. So their departure was their unmasking. Luke 12:2 says, "Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known." And part of God's work in His church is the work of uncovering. It's really interesting to watch this happen, to watch the people who profess to be Christians follow the deceivers and the liars and the religious phonies, and charlatans. If they had been of us, they would have remained with us. That is the principle.
Now what that's saying is that salvation is proven by perseverance. Have you heard that word? You remember one of the great tenets of Reformed Theology is the perseverance of the saints. True Christians stay true to the faith. Colossians 1:21, "You were formerly alienated, hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He's not reconciled you in His fleshly body through death," you've been reconciled to God. "You have been presented before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach." Isn't that amazing? You've literally been given to God, holy and above reproach because you've been covered with the righteousness of Christ. Verse 23, adds this caveat, "If indeed you continue in the faith and are not moved away." If you are moved away, then you were never blameless and holy before God, you were never justified. You were never reconciled. You were reconciled if you continue in the faith, it is an element of redemption that perseveres. It is a part of God's saving gift. There are no defectors among the ranks of the transformed.
In Hebrews 3:6 it says, "Christ is faithful as a Son over His house, whose house we are if we hold fast our confidence." How do you tell when somebody really belongs to God? How do you tell when somebody really belongs to Christ? If they continue. "If you continue in My Word you're My real disciple." Again Hebrews 3:14, "We have become partakers of Christ if we hold fasts the beginning to the end." If there's perseverance.
So the first thing you can note about antichrists in the congregation is they depart from the fellowship. They don't survive the truth. They come in, they do their work, they like magnets pull those who are not real, if they can, out of the church and their evil treacherous work actually is overturned by God for the purifying of the church. And that's been going on for a long time in Christianity. It's been going on certainly in my lifetime, it's go